1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an improved manufacturing system, and in particular to a manufacturing system comprising a hybrid data collection and component installation scheme that allows for optimizing equipment cost, throughput, and quality practices in a multi-step manufacturing facility.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a manufacturing environment, a requisition for goods or services, described in terms of exchange of those goods or services for agreed compensation in a contractual form, is called an order. Customers place orders for products that must be manufactured once the order has been placed. For timely manufacturing and delivery of the ordered product, a significant amount of planning, preparation, and procurement procedures are involved in the production process. Accounting systems, planning systems, warehouse management systems, logistics systems, and numerous other systems, support the production planning process to ensure that the orders are capable of being fulfilled. These systems may determine whether orders can be fulfilled based on the buyer's account status, suppliers' inventory levels, manufacturer's own warehouse inventory, quantities on hand, assembly schedule availability, and tooling and personnel availability among other factors.
When an order is received from a customer, the manufacturing system breaks down the order into requisite materials. The term “material” used in the context of an order in this manner means the various components, supplies, accessories, and consumable items needed for making the ordered product. For example, for an order for a computer, the materials may include a specific motherboard, a processor of a certain specification, a chassis of certain dimensions, a power supply of certain wattage, and number of screws of a certain size to fasten the motherboard to the chassis. For each order, the manufacturing system may generate one or more bills of materials (BOM), which is a listing of materials or parts needed to complete the order. A part is an individual component or device which exists prior to being assembled into another component or assembly.
A manufacturing process often comprises multiple steps or stages. In a manufacturing environment, these multiple stages may include material preparation (kitting), assembly or material processing (including machining or chemical processes), testing, and shipping, among others. When a customer order for a product is received in the manufacturing system, the parts required to fulfill the order are located by the kitting processes. Kitting is the process of organizing separate components or parts in a materials area into a group of parts for assembly based on a production order. Operators in the kitting area pull the parts needed to assemble the ordered product from a materials area and place these parts into a kit. The kitted parts are sent in a tote or bin to the assembly area, and the operators in the assembly area take the parts from the kit and assemble the parts to build the product. The assembly processes may also comprise multiple steps in which the assembled products are then used to build a larger product. After the assembly processes are performed, testing may be performed on the assembled product. The tested product is then prepared for shipping to the requesting customer.
Within the production environment, data is often collected about the parts used to build a product. This collected data is used to verify that only parts determined to be valid are actually used in the assembly process, as well as to track the location in which the parts are installed in the assembled product. Parts may be validated to enforce the quality of the product in spite of changes from the original production order, such as, for example, engineering changes which require that a part specified in an original bill of materials for a product is to be replaced with a substitute part for future manufacturing, or quality stop holds which prevent a part from being used in the manufacturing process for a period of time. To collect data about the parts for the build, an operator may scan the bar code/serial number on each part when the operator handles the parts, such as when the operator kits the parts in the kitting area or installs the part into the product in the assembly area. Examples of collected data may include, but are not limited to, a part number or part identification, an engineering change level or revision number, a unique sequence number, a lot number, batch ID, date code, time of manufacture, manufacturer of the component, manufacturing/processing location, an assembly ID or tracking number, a unique unit of work identifier for assemblies, and many forms of assembly or part secondary data such as MAC IDs for computer Network Interface Devices (NICs) and other such universal unique IDs, etc. The collected data may be used to verify that each part placed within the bin during the kitting processes or that each part used during the assembly process is a valid part that may be properly used in completing the production order.